But a more straightforward solution might be ratifying two separate amendments: one to eliminate the restriction on amendments eliminating Senate malapportionment, and a second to actually eliminate Senate malapportionment.
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Similarly, the Constitution effectively prohibits amendments that eliminate Senate malapportionment.
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Dingell is right: The Senate's malapportionment is absurd and bad.
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Gerrymandering is made even easier by another electoral abuse called malapportionment.
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Malapportionment—the creation of seats of wildly unequal size—worries critics most.
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Senate malapportionment is a relic of an unstable alliance among 13 young nations.
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Meanwhile, the biggest problem facing Democrats for the foreseeable future is Senate malapportionment.
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Pre-existing malapportionment helps Republicans capture the presidency despite losing a majority of voters.
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Again, Republicans owe that five-justice majority to Senate malapportionment and the Electoral College.
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But in Japan malapportionment is particularly persistent and severe because of the country's unusual demography.
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Malapportionment, in other words, does not simply give Republicans an undemocratic advantage in the Senate.
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Meanwhile, while Republicans controlled the Senate in 2016, they did sole solely due to Senate malapportionment.
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He was referring to Japan's severe malapportionment—the division of the country into legislative districts with widely differing populations.
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Similarly, Senate malapportionment also allowed Republicans to hold the late Justice Antonin Scalia's vacant seat open until Trump could fill it.
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The courts have repeatedly ruled against malapportionment, although they typically decline to throw out the results of elections held with skewed maps.
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" The result was that "the malapportionment in the Electoral College, which never had a very good justification, continues to exert influence today.
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" As the Heritage Foundation's Edwin Feulner argues in a piece that's fairly representative of Senate defenders, malapportionment "keeps less-populated states from being steamrolled.
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Previous essays in this series have addressed fundamental flaws in the Constitution: the ill-defined nature of presidential powers, the malapportionment of the Senate, the Electoral College.
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As mentioned above, Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh owe their jobs to Senate malapportionment and the Electoral College — and Republicans owe their dominance of the judiciary to these two men.
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Since then malapportionment has been rife, but the latest electoral maps are particularly bad, says Maria Chin Abdullah, until recently the head of Bersih, an alliance of groups which campaigns for fair elections.
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In light of this directive, the Evenwel plaintiffs contended, a procedure that counts everybody rather than the voting-eligible population amounts to a "massive and arbitrary malapportionment of eligible voters [that] is patently unconstitutional".
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"As to the in-state satellite locations, we renew our request that the IDP correct the malapportionment of SDEs to all in-state satellite caucus locations," a letter from the Buttigieg campaign to the Iowa Democratic Party reads.
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Sanders himself now regularly incorporates explicit discussion of the racial wealth gap into his broad indictments of the American economy, but it's somewhat awkward and risks repeating exactly what was problematic about Clinton's performatively woke messaging — if Democrats explicitly endorse the idea that politics should be about racial conflict, then they're stuck with the blunt reality that white people are a numerical majority whose demographic weight is further inflated by the malapportionment of the Senate and the Electoral College.
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Gerrymandering should not be confused with malapportionment, whereby the number of eligible voters per elected representative can vary widely without relation to how the boundaries are drawn. Nevertheless, the -mander suffix has been applied to particular malapportionments. Sometimes political representatives use both gerrymandering and malapportionment to try to maintain power.
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These amendments, now incorporated into the constitution, included correcting the legislative malapportionment and the establishment of a Lieutenant Governor position.
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Johnston, Ron. 2002. “Manipulating maps and winning elections: measuring the impact of malapportionment and gerrymandering”. In Political Geography, Volume 21, pp. 1-31.
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Green (1946), a challenge of state legislative apportionments, the Supreme Court declared that the republican form of government clause cannot be used as a basis to challenge state electoral malapportionment in court. However, the court clarified in Baker v. Carr (1962) that legislature malapportionment claims can be decided in court under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, as the equal protection issue was separate from the Guarantee Clause challenge.
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The Supreme Court, however, disagreed with Harlan in a series of rulings during the 1960s. The first case in this line of rulings was Baker v. Carr., Harlan, J., dissenting The Court ruled that the courts had jurisdiction over malapportionment issues and therefore were entitled to review the validity of district boundaries. Harlan, however, dissented, on the grounds that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that malapportionment violated their individual rights.
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Almost immediately, the Constitution of 1776 was recognized as flawed both for its restriction of the suffrage by property requirements, and for its malapportionment favoring the smaller eastern counties. Between 1801 and 1813, petitioners called on the Assembly to initiate a constitutional convention ten times.Shade 1996, pp. 57–61 Malapportionment in the Assembly was seen by reformers as "an usurpation of the minority over the majority" by the slave-owning eastern aristocracy.
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Despite being a smaller quota seat under the previous system of electoral malapportionment, the 2005 one vote one value reforms did not significantly affect the seat due to rapid population growth.
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These practices finally failed BN in the 14th General Election on 9 May 2018, when the opposing Pakatan Harapan (PH; English: "Alliance of Hope") won despite perceived efforts of gerrymandering and malapportionment from the incumbent.
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As Labor had attained a majority of the popular vote for a long period, and because malapportionment had been largely ended, the political scientists Neal Blewett and Dean Jaensch said "a Dunstan decade seems assured".
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Each state determines its own district boundaries, either through legislation or through non-partisan panels. "Malapportionment" is unconstitutional and districts must be approximately equal in population (see Wesberry v. Sanders). Additionally, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits redistricting plans that are intended to, or have the effect of, discriminating against racial or language minority voters. Aside from malapportionment and discrimination against racial or language minorities, federal courts have allowed state legislatures to engage in gerrymandering to benefit political parties or incumbents.
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Between 1881 and 1945 New Zealand applied a system of malapportionment called the country quota, which required urban districts to contain more people than rural ones but did not give them any equivalent increase in representation.
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Malapportionment is unequal and disproportionate representation electoral systems with multiple constituencies. It is a violation of the democratic principle of “one person, one vote” in that constituency boundaries enclose populations of various size, which means that the votes of people in regions of lower population have greater representation per vote than those in regions with a higher population. The effect of malapportionment is observed when equivalent percentages of the total vote results in different numbers of seats for each party due to one party having greater control in smaller constituencies and another in larger constituencies.
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The seat was created in 1983 as part of the reconfiguration of those in the county to avoid malapportionment, abolishing Oxford as a seat. It merged about half the city with the east of the former Abingdon seat.
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A Working Men's Club and Institute Union affiliate, the West Oxford Democrats Club has premises. Osney is part of the Oxfordshire County Council ward of Jericho and Osney (as currently named, wards being periodically redefined to avoid malapportionment).
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Election of the Legislative Council on website of Parliament of Western Australia. The 2005 changes continued to maintain the previous malapportionment in favour of rural regions. The changes took effect for the 2008 state election. Since 2008, the Legislative Council has had 36 members.
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McGinty v Western Australia, was a significant case decided in the High Court of Australia in 1996. It concerned a challenge by the Western Australia Labor Party leader Jim McGinty of the 1996 election results on the basis of malapportionment. The plaintiffs sought to enshrine the principle of ‘one vote one value’ in the Australian Constitution, and has had a significant impact on how the High Court approaches matters of the franchise, as well as malapportionment. The plaintiff's submissions were unanimously rejected by the court, who found that the interpretation of sections 7 and 24 of the Australian Constitution did not require that all votes hold the same value.
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Redistribution is required by law or constitution at least every decade in most representative democracy systems that use first-past-the-post or similar electoral systems to prevent geographic malapportionment. The act of manipulation of electoral districts to favour a candidate or party is called gerrymandering.
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The 1957 ALP split, in which Labor Premier Vince Gair led many MPs out of the party to form the Queensland Labor Party (QLP), undermined the advantage of the malapportionment to Labor. Since the boundaries were drawn to take advantage of the ALP's rural supporters (farm workers, miners etc.) the rural-based Country Party was able to take the most advantage from Labor's infighting. In 1971, Bjelke-Petersen, who had become Premier in 1968, proposed to refine the malapportionment to favour his party at the expense of his Coalition partners, the Liberal Party, as well as Labor. Electoral demographics had changed since 1949 and Labor now drew most of its support from urban concentrations of workers.
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The cases that troubled Cox the most during his tenure, and the area where he differed widest from Robert Kennedy, involved malapportionment of voting districts. Over the years failure to re-allocate voting districts particularly in state legislatures, produced wildly disproportionate districts, with rural areas having many fewer voters than urban districts as a result of the urbanization of America. The result was dilution of the urban vote with policy resulting accordingly; rectification would benefit Democrats politically, while malapportionment stood as an obstacle to legislation that improved the lot of city-dwellers, minorities and the poor. The problem was that Justice Frankfurter had written in a plurality decision in 1946 that such issues amounted to a political question—a matter not appropriate for the Court to resolve.
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Blewett and Jaensch, pp. 171–172. The South Australian House of Assembly. The Assembly's composition was radically altered after changes were made to electoral legislation, abolishing the electoral malapportionment of the 'Playmander'. There was a degree of speculation in the press that Dunstan would call for a new election because of the adverse outcome.
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By comparison, the British general election of 1945 was also conducted under first past the post but with more equal constituencies, and produced a landslide victory for a party which received 47% of the vote. Malapportionment was a key tool that allowed the National Party to implement its Apartheid program within the notionally democratic parliament.
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Electoral malapportionment was a result of the pre-1994 electoral system and encouraged politicians to appeal to segments of the population through pork-barrel politics and protectionist policies. Furthermore, the economic recession arising from the real estate bubble at the end of the 1980s and the LDP's failure to adjust severely tarnished its reputation.
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In terms of population size, Paya Terubong is the largest state constituency in Penang, with 46,741 registered voters within this constituency alone . Concerns have been raised by the locals about the lopsided population disparity between the Paya Terubong constituency and the other, less populated seats in Penang, and the perceived malapportionment of the state seats.
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Therefore, Bolton argued that the legislature should choose the governor despite malapportionment. A special election could not be called prior to the tabulation of returns on January 10, 1967.Atlanta History, p. 47 In a five-to- two decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Bolton's reasoning and cleared the path for the legislature to elect Lester Maddox.
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Blackbird Leys is a civil parish and ward in Oxford, England. According to the 2011 census, the population of the ward (whose boundaries may change occasionally so as to ensure minimal malapportionment) stood at 6,077. Unlike most parts of the City of Oxford, the area has a civil parish. The civil parish was created in 1990.
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Combined with the remains of the "Playmander" malapportionment,Jaensch (1997), p. 39. it was difficult for the Labor Party to achieve the representation it wished. The Legislative Council either watered down or outright rejected a considerable amount of Labor legislation; bills to legalise homosexuality, abolish corporal and capital punishment and allow gambling and casinos were rejected.Parkin, p. 307.
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Efforts in the late 1960s were rejected, however, due to the continued malapportionment of the legislature. In 1974, George Busbee won the gubernatorial election on a platform of constitutional revision. By the time of Busbee's election, the constitution contained 831 amendments and was the nation's longest. The 1976 revision, however, produced little change beyond reorganizing the document's provisions.
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Gerrymandering has not typically been considered a problem in the Australian electoral system largely because drawing of electoral boundaries has typically been done by non-partisan electoral commissions. There have been historical cases of malapportionment, whereby the distribution of electors to electorates was not in proportion to the population in several states. For example, Sir Thomas Playford was Premier of South Australia from 1938 to 1965 as a result of a system of malapportionment, which became known as the Playmander, despite it not strictly speaking involving a gerrymander. More recently the nominally independent South Australian Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission has been accused of favouring the Australian Labor Party, as the party has been able to form government in four of the last seven elections, despite receiving a lower two-party preferred vote.
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The Playmander was a gerrymandering system, a pro-rural electoral malapportionment in the Australian state of South Australia, introduced by the incumbent Liberal and Country League (LCL) government, and in place for 32 years from 1936 to 1968.Labor and Liberal Parties, SA, Dean Jaensch, "A 2:1 ratio of enrolments in favour of the rural areas was in force from 1936." It consisted of 26 low-population rural seats holding up to a 10-to-1 advantage over the 13 high-population metropolitan seats in the state parliament, even though rural seats contained only a third of South Australia's population. At the peak of the malapportionment in 1968, the rural seat of Frome had 4,500 formal votes, while the metropolitan seat of Enfield had 42,000 formal votes.
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Note that the changes shown reflect an unchanged council size. They may be influenced by an unpredictable effect of the Boundary Commission for England aligning electorate size to the extent of wards (the body responsible for updating boundaries on demographic change to avoid the gradual natural onset of malapportionment). This change moved all areas of the district to single-councillor representation.
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Phillips, Kevin P.; The Emerging Republican Majority, p. 232 Whereas the urban voters who turned to Eisenhower felt wholly disfranchised both locally and nationally by the one-party system and malapportionment, rural poor voters supported the New Deal/Fair Deal status quo.Buchholz, Michael O., The South in Presidential Politics: The End of Democratic Hegemony. Master of Arts (Political Science), August, 1973, p.
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The seat forms a far western strip of West Sussex and covers most of the Chichester district. Before the 1974 redistribution Chichester was a more compact seat, taking in the eastern towns of Arundel and Bognor Regis in latter years. Emergence of newer urban centres and modern cities meant that the area was expanded to the north to avoid malapportionment.
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Territories are not guaranteed Senate representation by the Constitution, and were unrepresented until 1975, when legislation was passed granting each territory two seats in the Senate. The Senate's present size is 76 seats. There has been malapportionment of electorates in both the federal and state parliaments in the past, typically in the form of rural areas receiving disproportionately more seats than urban areas.
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The Elections Department of Singapore (ELD) is a department of the government of Singapore under the Prime Minister's Office that oversees the procedure for elections in Singapore, including parliamentary elections and presidential elections. It sees that elections are fairly carried out and has a supervisory role to safeguard against electoral fraud. It has the power to create constituencies and redistrict them, with the justification of preventing malapportionment.
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The Whigs were more united statewide in their insistence to expand suffrage and find a more equitable reapportionment between east and west sections.Shade 1996, p. 262-263 The General Assembly malapportionment was a perpetual irritant in Virginia's politics, and in December 1849 Democrat John B. Floyd became the fourth governor to call for a Constitutional Convention to reform the Constitution of 1830.Van Schreeven 1967, p.
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Warren's priority on fairness shaped other major decisions. In 1962, over the strong objections of Frankfurter, the Court agreed that questions regarding malapportionment in state legislatures were not political issues, and thus were not outside the Court's purview. For years underpopulated rural areas had deprived metropolitan centers of equal representation in state legislatures. In Warren's California, Los Angeles County had only one state senator.
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Wards are drawn by an independent commission to aim for equality of electorate, instead of containing interrelated housing, to avoid malapportionment. The population at the 2011 Census was 12,759. #A narrower definition is the Westbourne Conservation Area identified since the late 20th century to maintain coherent classical architecture building schemes in Planning Law; its history, structure and layout mirrors the bulk of neighbouring Bayswater.
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The most recent election was held on 17 March 2018. Another distinctive aspect of the history of the South Australian Parliament was the "Playmander", a gerrymandering system that instituted a pro-rural electoral malapportionment introduced by the incumbent Liberal and Country League (LCL) government, and in place for 32 years from 1936 to 1968.Labor and Liberal Parties, SA, Dean Jaensch, "A 2:1 ratio of enrolments in favour of the rural areas was in force from 1936." It consisted of 26 low-population rural seats holding up to a 10-to-1 advantage over the 13 high-population metropolitan seats in the state parliament, even though rural seats contained only a third of South Australia's population. At the peak of the malapportionment in 1968, the rural seat of Frome had 4,500 formal votes, while the metropolitan seat of Enfield had 42,000 formal votes.
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Bessacarr is currently the name of the ward which as such undergoes boundary and name reviews every eight to twelve years theoretically to avoid malapportionment. Elections are held all-out from 1999 every four years. For the 2015 term the ward is served by one Conservative and two Labour members. The 2014 election of Neil Gethin saw the Labour Party gain a seat for the first time since 1997.
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The Labor Party gained twelve seats from the Coalition and Independents, making something of a recovery from its disastrous 1974 performance. Even so, the Coalition retained a commanding majority in the Legislative Assembly. For the first time, the National Party won more votes than the Liberal party (an electoral malapportionment had allowed the Nationals to win more seats than the Liberals previously). The Liberal Party had begun to decline.
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During the 1960s and 1970s, Georgia made significant changes in civil rights and governance. As in many other states, its legislature had not reapportioned congressional districts according to population from 1931 to after the 1960 census. Problems of malapportionment in the state legislature, where rural districts had outsize power in relation to urban districts, such as Atlanta's, were corrected after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Wesberry v. Sanders (1964).
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The redelineation was approved 2 months before the previous election, which saw enormous malapportionment between constituencies. For example, in Selangor, Sabak Bernam has approximately 40,000 voters but Bangi contains 180,000 voters. However, any early redistribution would require a constitutional amendment, which necessitates a two-thirds majority in the Dewan Rakyat The status of the review is currently unknown due to the change in government during the political crisis described below.
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However, Dunstan realised the futility of such a move and instead sought to humiliate the LCL into bringing an end to malapportionment. Although Stott's decision to support the LCL ended any realistic chance of Dunstan remaining premier, Dunstan did not immediately resign his commission, intending to force Hall and the LCL to demonstrate that they had support on the floor of the Assembly when it reconvened. He used the six weeks before the start of the new legislature to draw attention to malapportionment. Protests were held on 15 March in Light Square. There, Dunstan spoke to a crowd of more than 10,000: "We need to show that the people of SA feel that at last the watershed has been reached in this, and that they will not continue to put up with a system which is as undemocratic as the present one in SA."Blewett and Jaensch, pp. 172–173. On 16 April, the first day of the new House's sitting, Dunstan lost a confidence vote.
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The Australian Liberal Party, also known as Progressive Liberals, was a minor political party that operated in the state of Victoria in the late 1920s. The party was founded early in 1927 in preparation for the state election to be held later that year. It believed that the Nationalist Party had abandoned liberal principles. An urban-based party, it opposed the rural malapportionment that existed in the Victorian Legislative Assembly at the time.
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The Electoral district of Clayton is a former electoral district of the Victorian Legislative Assembly. It was named for the Melbourne suburb of Clayton, and also includes Clarinda, Notting Hill as well as parts of surrounding suburbs. It was created by the redistribution that abolished malapportionment in the Victorian Legislative Assembly prior to the 1985 election, and was always a safe Labor seat. Clayton was abolished in 2014 following a redistribution of Victoria's electoral boundaries.
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Having already overturned its ruling that redistricting was a purely political question in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962), the Court ruled to correct what it considered egregious examples of malapportionment; these were serious enough to undermine the premises underlying republican government. Before Reynolds, urban counties nationwide often had total representations similar to rural counties, and in Florida, there was a limit to three representatives even for the most populous counties.
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When the Country (later National) Party first won power in 1957 under Bjelke-Petersen's predecessor, Frank Nicklin, it inherited a system of malapportionment from the previous Labor Party government. After becoming premier Nicklin reworked this setup to benefit the Country and Liberal parties. The provincial cities were split off from their hinterlands, where new Country Party seats were created. At the same time, more Liberal seats were created in the Brisbane area.
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All were Republican lawyers except Bowman, a Democratic newspaperman. All were from Council Bluffs except Hager (from Adair County), McPherson (from Montgomery County), Green (from Audubon County), and Vincent (from Guthrie County). The General Assembly's 45-year failure to reapportion congressional districts resulted in malapportionment, which was particularly severe in certain districts in Iowa. Residents of three other southern Iowa districts (the 1st, 6th, and 8th) gained in per capita influence as the districts' population growth slowed or reversed.
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In South Australia, initially a Liberal and Country Party affiliated party, the Liberal and Country League (LCL), mostly led by Premier of South Australia Tom Playford, was in power from the 1933 election to the 1965 election, though with assistance from an electoral malapportionment, or gerrymander, known as the Playmander. The LCL's Steele Hall governed for one term from the 1968 election to the 1970 election and during this time began the process of dismantling the Playmander.
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The culmination of the historical state lower house seat malapportionment known as the Playmander eventually saw it legislated after 1989 that the Electoral Commission of South Australia redraw boundaries after each election with the objective of the party that receives over 50 percent of the TPP vote at each forthcoming election forms government. Nationally in 1983/84, minor gerrymandering by incumbent federal governments was legislated against with the formation of the independent Commonwealth statutory authority, the Australian Electoral Commission.
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It was itself replaced by the Electoral (Amendment) Act 1969, which created a new pattern of constituencies for the 19th Dáil (elected in 1969). It also reduced the number of seats in the Dáil by 3 from 147 to 144. The Electoral (Amendment) Act 1959 was struck out in 1961 by the Supreme Court as being repugnant to the Constitution of Ireland because of excessive malapportionment. The replacement, the Electoral (Amendment) Act 1961, relied instead on manipulating district size.
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The CJC subsequently cleared Cooper of impropriety. Following the redistribution, which followed legislation designed to rid Queensland's electoral system of malapportionment in favour of rural areas, Cooper transferred to Crows Nest at the 1992 election. He returned to the Nationals' front bench in November of that year as Shadow Minister for Police. In February 1996, when Borbidge formed a minority government after winning a closely fought by-election in Mundingburra, Cooper became Minister for Police, Corrective Services, and Racing.
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During its 42-year existence as the Liberal and Country League, it spent 34 years in government, mainly due to an electoral malapportionment scheme known as the Playmander. The Playmander was named after LCL leader Sir Tom Playford, who was the Premier of South Australia for 27 years from 1938 until his election loss in 1965. The Playmander was dismantled through an electoral reform in 1968, with the first election under the new boundaries in 1970.
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This was attributed to heavy malapportionment of the electoral districts.Pakatan lost, but not defeated Pakatan Rakyat also gained 7 more parliamentary seats compared to the 12th general election. Anwar did not concede defeat, alleging widespread electoral fraud. Al Jazeera reported that Anwar Ibrahim came close to winning the election on 5 May 2013, but refused to admit defeat, and therefore also did not step down."Profile: Anwar Ibrahim", Kuala Lumpur, 6 May 2013. Retrieved on 10 May 2013.
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Retrieved 10 January 2013.See section "ELECTORAL DISTRICT OF MURRAY" in An Act to amend the Constitution Act, 1934–1965 – Australasian Legal Information Institute. Retrieved 10 January 2013. From its establishment to the 1938 state election, Murray was a three-member electorate, but was made a single-member electorate afterwards, as part of a system of electoral malapportionment known as the "Playmander". In both incarnations it elected candidates from both major parties as marginal and safe seat holders at various times.
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Almost immediately, the Constitution of 1776 was recognized as flawed both for its restriction of the suffrage by property requirements, and for its malapportionment favoring the smaller eastern counties. Between 1801 and 1813, petitioners called on the Assembly to initiate a constitutional convention ten times. The House of Delegates passed a bill twice, but the conservative eastern planter majority in the Virginia Senate killed both measures. Continuing growth in the western parts of the state led to another fifteen years of agitation.
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The organization used malapportionment to control what areas of the state were over-represented in the General Assembly and the U.S. Congress until ordered to end the practice by the 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Davis v. Mann and the 1965 the Virginia Supreme Court decision in Wilkins v. Davis respectively. Passage of Federal civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965, helped end the state's Jim Crow laws which effectively disfranchised African Americans.
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The so-called 1955 system was characterized by a one-party dominance of the LDP and a number of other political parties in perennial opposition. Structural factors conducive to clientelism include fiscal centralization, the pre-1994 electoral system and electoral malapportionment. Fiscal centralization provided a context for the commodification of votes for material gains. The pre-1994 electoral system - Single Non-Transferable Vote in Multimember Districts (SNTV/MMD) - encouraged the proliferation of koenkai networks, money politics, and entrenching clientelistic behaviors in elections.
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The LCL won 29 seats versus only 13 for the three Labor factions combined. Though the Labor split in South Australia would only last until 1934, this would be the start of 32 years of LCL government in South Australia—one of the longest unbroken runs for a governing party in the Commonwealth. The LCL would stay in office until the 1965 state election with the assistance of a pro-LCL electoral malapportionment known as the Playmander, which would be introduced in 1936.
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The Australian Labor Party is Australia's oldest political party, founded in 1891. It is a centre-left social democratic party which is formally linked to the trade union labour movement.Jaensch (1986), pp. 180–182. At a state level, the South Australian Branch of the Australian Labor Party had been in government since the previous election in 2002, having been in opposition from 1993 to 2002. Since the 1970 election ending decades of electoral malapportionment of the Playmander,Jaensch (1986), pp. 253–259.Jaensch (1997), pp. 39–44.
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Seats in the House of Commons are distributed roughly in proportion to the population of each province and territory. However, some ridings are more populous than others, and the Canadian constitution contains provisions regarding provincial representation. As a result, there is some interprovincial and regional malapportionment relative to the population. The House of Commons was established in 1867, when the British North America Act 1867 (now called the Constitution Act, 1867) created the Dominion of Canada and was modelled on the British House of Commons.
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The rural conservatives, whose power was grounded in the Legislative Council (pictured), sought to retain their influence in both the party and the state through malapportionment in electoral districts and the LCL party organisation. Labor's leader, Don Dunstan, also introduced a bill for reform of the Legislative Council, which sought to remove its wage and property based qualifications and instil adult suffrage. Hall himself stated he would approve the bill if it included a clause guaranteeing that the Legislative Council could only be abolished through a referendum.
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The electorate of any constituency was to be as close as possible to a country- specific electoral quota to reduce malapportionment; where rigid adherence to the "as far as practicable" guidelines would mean a large disparity between electorates, the commissions were expressly empowered to form seats which combine parts of two (and where major disparity still remains, more) local government areas. The electoral quota was obtained by dividing the total electorate for either Great Britain or Northern Ireland by the number of allocated seats.
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Sir Tom Playford, LCL Leader 1938–1966, Premier 1938–1965 The Butler LCL introduced the electoral malapportionment scheme later known as the Playmander in 1936. The House of Assembly was also reduced from 46 members elected from multi-member districts to 39 members elected from single-member electorates. The electorates consisted of rural districts enjoying a 2-to-1 advantage in the state parliament, even though they contained less than half of the population. Two-thirds of seats were to be located in rural areas ("the country").
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The term is a portmanteau of Joh Bjelke- Petersen's surname with the word "Gerrymander", where electoral boundaries are redrawn in an unnatural way with the dominant intention of favouring one political party or grouping over its rivals. Although Bjelke-Petersen's 1972 redistributions occasionally had elements of "gerrymandering" in the strict sense, their perceived unfairness had more to do with malapportionment whereby certain areas (normally rural) are simply granted more representation than their population would dictate if electorates contained equal numbers of voters (or population).
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Labor won three seats, metropolitan Norwood and Prospect and rural Victoria from the LCL. The LCL won one seat, rural Murray from Labor. Notably, neither major party contested the independent-held seat of Ridley. The Labor opposition won 53 percent of the statewide two-party vote however the LCL retained government with the assistance of the Playmander − an electoral malapportionment that also saw a clear majority of the statewide two-party vote won by Labor while failing to form government in 1944, 1962 and 1968.
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Richards remained opposition leader for 11 years, during which Labor increased its primary vote at three consecutive elections. However, it was unable to dislodge the LCL, now led by Tom Playford, due to the electoral malapportionment known as the Playmander, in which rural votes were worth several times more than votes in Adelaide. He actually led Labor to a 53.3 percent two-party vote at the 1944 election. In most of the rest of Australia, this would have been enough to make him Premier with a solid majority.
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Individual voters can come to have very different degrees of influence on the legislative process. This malapportionment can greatly affect representation after long periods of time or large population movements. In the United Kingdom during the Industrial Revolution, several constituencies that had been fixed since they gained representation in the Parliament of England became so small that they could be won with only a handful of voters (rotten boroughs). Similarly, in the U.S. the state legislature of Alabama refused to redistrict for more than 60 years, despite major changes in population patterns.
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Hall was embarrassed that the LCL was even in a position to govern despite having clearly lost in terms of actual votes. Acknowledging that the obvious unfairness of the election result put him in a politically unacceptable position, he decided to institute electoral reforms to weaken the malapportionment of the Playmander. Since 1936, the House of Assembly had comprised 39 seats – 13 in metropolitan Adelaide, and 26 in the country. That was in accordance with the requirement of the State Constitution that there be two country seats for every one in Adelaide.
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According to ABC election analyst Antony Green, Barnett would have been forced to keep the Nationals in his cabinet in any event. As mentioned above, even after the 2008 electoral reforms, the Legislative Council still has a significant rural overweighting. Green argued that the malapportionment in the Legislative Council all but forces a Liberal premier to seek National support in order to govern, even when the Liberals have enough support in the Legislative Assembly to govern alone. In November 2013, Grylls stepped down as party leader and WA Minister for Regional Development.
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The terms of reference of the Commission have set five seats as the maximum and discourage constituencies crossing county boundaries. A separate Local Electoral Area Boundary Committee fulfils a similar function for Local Electoral Area boundaries. A proposed Electoral Commission would replace both the Constituency Commission and the Local Electoral Area Boundary Committee. Before 1977, boundary drawing was often partisan in favour of the government of the day. The Electoral (Amendment) Act 1959 was struck out in 1961 by the Supreme Court as being repugnant to the Constitution because of excessive malapportionment.
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Dunstan became Attorney-General after the 1965 election, and replaced the older Frank Walsh as premier in 1967. Despite maintaining a much larger vote over the LCL, Labor lost two seats at the 1968 election, with the LCL forming government with support of an independent. Dunstan responded by increasing his attacks on the Playmander, convincing the LCL into watering down the malapportionment. With little change in Labor's vote but with the Playmander removed, Labor won 27 of 47 seats at the 1970 election, and again in 1973, 1975 and 1977.
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Bersih claimed that the electoral roll was marred by irregularities such as gerrymandering, phantom voters, malapportionment and postal vote frauds. On 10 November 2007, Bersih organised the first rally with 10,000 to 40,000 turnout and held a public demonstration at Dataran Merdeka, Kuala Lumpur. Supporters of Bersih were urged to wear yellow T-shirts as a symbol of protest. The rally was often credited for the shift in political landscape in 2008 general election, when the incumbent National Front coalition failed to obtain a two- thirds supermajority for the first time since 1969.
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The Legislative Assembly of Queensland is the sole chamber of the unicameral Parliament of Queensland established under the Constitution of Queensland. Elections are held every four years and are done by full preferential voting. The Assembly has 93 members, who have used the letters MP after their names since 2000 (previously they were styled MLAs). There is approximately the same population in each electorate; however, that has not always been the case (in particular, a malapportionment system - not, strictly speaking, a gerrymander - dubbed the Bjelkemander was in effect during the 1970s and 1980s).
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The Bjelkemander was the term given to a system of malapportionment in the Australian state of Queensland in the 1970s and 1980s. Under the system, electorates were allocated to zones such as rural or metropolitan and electoral boundaries drawn so that rural electorates had about half as many voters as metropolitan ones. The Country Party (later National Party), a rural-based party led by Joh Bjelke-Petersen, was able to govern uninhibited during this period due to the 'Bjelkemander' and the absence of an upper house of Parliament.
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The LCL had formed the government of South Australia for 35 of the previous 38 years due to a malapportionment favouring country areas over the Adelaide area. Deliberately inequitable electoral boundaries resulted in a country vote being worth twice a vote in Adelaide, even though Adelaide accounted for two-thirds of the state's population. This system was popularly known as the "Playmander," since it allowed Thomas Playford to remain Premier of South Australia for 26 years. In the latter part of Playford's tenure, the LCL could only hope to win a few seats in Adelaide.
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In drawing boundaries, they are required to prefer local government boundaries, but may deviate from these to prevent great disparities in electorate; such disparities are given the formal term malapportionment. The proposals of the Boundary Commissions are subject to parliamentary approval, but may not be amended. After their next Periodic Reviews, the Boundary Commissions will be absorbed into the Electoral Commission, which was established in 2000. As of 2019, the UK is divided into 650 constituencies, with 533 in England, 40 in Wales, 59 in Scotland, and 18 in Northern Ireland.
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"One Man One Vote" protest at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1964, before passage of the Voting Rights Act and when delegates of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party attempted to be seated. One man, one vote (or one person, one vote) expresses the principle that individuals should have equal representation in voting. This slogan is used by advocates of political equality to refer to such electoral reforms as universal suffrage, proportional representation, and the elimination of plural voting, malapportionment, or gerrymandering. The British trade unionist George Howell used the phrase "one man, one vote" in political pamphlets in 1880.
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The Parliament has two chambers: the House of Assembly and the Senate. The House of Assembly was originally composed of 40 members from 20 electoral districts (two representatives from each district) for a term not to exceed 5 years. As the districts, based on the old parish boundaries, contained significantly differing numbers of voters (malapportionment), that body was replaced in 2002 with a 36-member House elected from single-seat electoral districts of roughly equal population for a five-year term. The Senate, called the Legislative Council until 1980, is the revising chamber and serves concurrently with the House of Assembly.
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A young farmer from a rural constituency, Hall had never conflicted with the party line, and was expected to uphold the existing LCL principles, having spoken out in support of the Playmander and the restrictive Legislative Council before.Jaensch and Bullock (1978), p. 11 However, when the LCL was returned to office in 1968 under his leadership, with the help of malapportionment, Hall was under pressure. Labor had led the LCL 52.0 to 43.8% on primary votes, but owing to the Playmander, both ended with 19 seats and an independent supported the LCL and returned them to power.
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White fell in with a group of MPs known as the "ginger group". This group disagreed with Bjelke-Petersen and Liberal leader Llewellyn Edwards on a number of issues, including the system of electoral malapportionment in use within Queensland at the time, reducing the power of the National Party in the cabinet, and removing the controversial street march laws in place at the time. Despite many of these views being in opposition to Edwards' views and government policy, White was appointed as the minister for Welfare Services in December 1980, just fifteen months after entering parliament.
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In May 2005 legislation was passed to remove the malapportionment in the Legislative Assembly (though rural areas remain significantly overrepresented in the Legislative Council) and shift to a system of one vote one value. The change was widely expected to devastate the National Party, leading to many questioning whether it would survive the coming election. In June 2005 Trenorden was challenged by Brendon Grylls for the leadership and stood down before a formal ballot was held. Grylls sought to reposition the Nationals, taking them beyond their traditional rural base and making a greater appeal to regional Western Australia.
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In 1938, the Assembly was reduced to 39 members, elected from single-member districts. The House of Assembly has had 47 members since the 1970 election, elected from single-member districts: currently 34 in the Adelaide metropolitan area and 13 in rural areas. These seats are intended to represent approximately the same population in each electorate. Another distinctive aspect of the history of the South Australian Parliament was the "Playmander", a gerrymandering system that instituted a pro-rural electoral malapportionment introduced by the incumbent Liberal and Country League (LCL) government, and in place for 32 years from 1936 to 1968.
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The redelineation was approved 2 months before GE14, which saw enormous malapportionment between constituencies e.g. in Selangor, Sabak Bernam has 40,000 voters but in Bangi, there are 180,000 voters. Because Article 113 of the Federal Constitution stated that the EC could only conduct a redelineation exercise after eight years from the date of the last exercise or if there was a change in the number of parliamentary seats under Article 46. If the exercise is necessary for the next general election, amendments have to be made to the Federal Constitution and have to be passed with a two-thirds majority in Dewan Rakyat.
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Several counties in the Eastern Shore, northern Piedmont and western counties began opening polls for direct expression from the voters for a constitutional convention, eventually there were twenty-eight such counties calling for reform.Shade 1996, p. 57-61 The Virginia Constitutional Convention, 1830, by George Catlin Malapportionment in the Assembly was seen as "an usurpation of the minority over the majority" by the slave owning eastern aristocracy. Partisans argued for apportionment by white population, versus "federal numbers" combining white population with three-fifths slaves, versus the existing system counting whites and slaves equally to favor the slave-holding eastern counties.
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The 150 members of the unicameral Parliament are elected by two methods: 77 by proportional representation in a single nationwide constituency with an electoral threshold of 5%, and 73 by two-round system in single-member constituencies with majority rule requiring the winner to get over 50% (in the previous election the first-placed candidate had to pass a 30% threshold to win a constituency seat). The boundaries of constituencies were re-drawn to reduce the malapportionment effect. Previously, the size of electorates ranged from fewer than 6,000 voters in one district to over 150,000 voters in another.Elections Guide Civil.
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The Parliament of Western Australia is a bicameral legislature comprising the Western Australian Legislative Council, the Legislative Assembly and the Queen, represented by the Governor of Western Australia. The Legislative Council has 36 members, elected for fixed four-year terms from six multi- member electoral regions by "community of interest" —3 metropolitan and 3 rural—each electing 6 members by proportional voting.Election of the Legislative Council on website of Parliament of Western AustraliaElectoral Amendment and Repeal Act 2005 (No.1 of 2005) There is a significant malapportionment in the Legislative Council in favour of rural regions.
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Reviewing such representation in North London, the Boundary Commission for England (de facto), as is custom agreed by Parliament, altered the area's limits to avoid malapportionment, as London's housing and rates of occupancy have altered. The western border district, town or neighbourhood of Pinner went to a new cross-Borough seat, Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, making its source, based on a ward breakdown of the last result, and mirrored by local election results, a stronger seat for Labour; this was coupled with the inclusion of Marlborough ward which had returned many Labour councillors since World War II.
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In addition, in 1988 the Federal Labor Government held four constitutional referendums—one of which was for the adoption of fair electoral systems around Australia. Although the referendum did not succeed, it heightened public awareness of the issue. A large public interest non- partisan organisation, the Citizens for Democracy, lobbied extensively the Liberal and Labor parties to abolish the gerrymander and to make it a major issue in the lead up to the landmark 1989 Queensland election. Despite the malapportionment, Labor was rarely able to garner a higher percentage of the vote than the Coalition for most of this period.
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Labor had by then been in opposition in South Australia since 1933. The LCL, led by Sir Thomas Playford, ruled South Australia through a time of strong economic development and held power thanks to an electoral malapportionment known as the Playmander, in which rural areas were significantly overrepresented in the legislature. By this time, many South Australian Labor politicians had despaired of ever winning power, and considered the Deputy Opposition Leader's post to be a thankless, low-paying job. Following the split in the Labor Party in 1955, Walsh and O'Halloran resisted numerous overtures to join the heavily Catholic Democratic Labor Party (DLP).
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The malapportionment favouring country areas helped Labor in 1949 onwards and the Country Party from 1957. The 1972 redistribution introduced a gerrymander effect favouring the Country Party, by which boundaries were drawn to consolidate Labor-voting populations and diversify Country supporters. A seat won with 50.1% of the vote was just as good in Parliament as one with 100% support. Liberal and especially Labor voters were usually found in identifiable "clumps" within Brisbane and the regional cities, a reflection of the income levels available to workers and the middle class dividing them between desirable and less desirable suburbs.
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They supported a 1925 redistribution bill that continued rural malapportionment, but soon fell out again with the Nationalists and began to work more closely with Labor. In early 1926 they raised questions about the redistribution bill and the government was in danger of defeat, but divisions within their own ranks intervened. Angus, whose seat was no longer threatened, distanced himself; Snowball and Everard joined with Labor to oppose the redistribution; Farthing was offered Nationalist endorsement for the seat of Caulfield and accepted; and Billson's position was unclear due to his illness. At this time the Liberals ceased to operate as a distinct group.
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The Labor opposition won in excess of 54 percent of the statewide two-party vote, however the LCL retained government with the assistance of the Playmander − an electoral malapportionment in which there were two country seats for every one seat in Adelaide. This system resulted in Labor being denied government in 1944, 1953 and 1968 despite winning clear statewide two-party majorities. While O'Halloran had despaired of ever becoming Premier, Walsh made a concerted effort to end the LCL's three-decade grip on government. Knowing that the Playmander made a statewide campaign fruitless, Walsh instead decided to target marginal LCL seats.
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However, the LCL's grip on the country areas was such that it was able to retain power when it lost by substantial margins in terms of raw votes. Labor finally overcame the Playmander at the 1965 election under Frank Walsh, but the malapportionment was strong enough that Labor only won 21 seats—just enough for a majority—despite taking 54.3 percent of the two-party vote. At the 1968 election, Labor, now led by Don Dunstan won 53.2 percent of the two- party vote. However, Labor lost two seats to the LCL under Playford's successor, Hall.
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Redrawing of electoral constituency (or "riding" or "district") borders should be conducted at regular intervals, or by statutory rules and definitions, if for no other reason than to eliminate malapportionment attributable to population movements. Some electoral reforms seek to fix these borders according to some cultural or ecological criterion, e.g., bioregional democracy – which sets borders to fit exactly to ecoregions – to avoid the obvious abuse of "gerrymandering" in which constituency borders are set deliberately to favor one party over another, or to improve management of the public's commonly owned property. Electoral borders and their manipulation have been a major issue in the United States in particular.
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The level of malapportionment had grown to a level in excess of 3:1 in favour of rural areas, and Hall, having won the 1968 state election on 46 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote, committed himself to a fairer electoral system.Jaensch (1986), pp. 297–298 Previously 39 members were elected: 13 from metropolitan Adelaide and 26 from the country. Hall's first attempt for reform was a system with 45 seats and 20 from the country; this proposal received scorn from both Labor and the rural councillors, and was seen as not going far enough by the former and going too far by the latter.
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The practice of gerrymandering has been around in the country since its independence in 1957. The ruling coalition at that time, Barisan Nasional (BN; English: "National Front"), has been accused of controlling the election commission by revising the boundaries of constituencies. For example, during the 13th General Election in 2013, Barisan Nasional won 60% of the seats in the Malaysian Parliament despite only receiving 47% of the popular vote. Malapportionment has also been used at least since 1974, when it was observed that in one state alone (Perak), the parliamentary constituency with the most voters had more than ten times as many voters as the one with the fewest voters.
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As the new amendments to the party constitution had yet to be approved by the Registrar of Societies, candidates from PRM contested the 2004 general election using the symbol of the old National Justice Party. The party fared poorly in the elections and only managed to retain one parliamentary seat, Permatang Pauh which is held by Dr Wan Azizah, despite winning 9% of the popular vote. The poor showing was later attributed to malapportionment and gerrymandering in the delineation of constituencies, with one estimate suggesting that on average, a vote for the BN government was worth 28 times the vote of a Keadilan supporter.
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The constituency, officially the Balham and Tooting Division of the Parliamentary Borough of Wandsworth, was created by the Representation of the People Act 1918. The 1918 Act had the principal aim of reducing the growing malapportionment due to electorate growth in geographical areas coupled with the subsidiary aim of realigning constituency boundaries so as to largely correspond with units of local government units (as created in 1889 and 1900). The new seat was one of five divisions of the Metropolitan Borough of Wandsworth in the parliamentary County of London. The seat had previously formed part of the single-member Wandsworth constituency, created in 1885.
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Bersih rally in KL in 2011 calling for electoral reforms The election watchdog group Bersih will be a big factor in the elections as they were responsible for organising large rallies calling for the electoral reforms in Malaysia in 2011 and 2012. They have pointed out that the electoral roll was marred by irregularities such as gerrymandering, phantom voters, malapportionment and postal vote fraud. Bersih has also warned against politicians or groups that support intimidation and violence against the electorate. Bersih has added to its blacklist of politicians who perpetuate the cycle of political violence such as Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, Defence Minister Zahid Hamidi and BN candidate Hamidah Othman.
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This result was in part possible due to the malapportionment in the Western Australian parliament which created more seats in mining areas, where the Labor Party was dominant, and in agricultural areas, where the Country Party was dominant. Two changes of affiliation had occurred in the previous term, which resulted in the Country Party increasing their parliamentary strength in the Assembly to 12 members. Arnold Piesse, who as an independent had defeated former Country Party leader Alec Thomson in his Katanning seat at the 1930 election, joined the Country Party, as did Richard Sampson, the long-serving member for Swan who had been elected a Nationalist.
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Crocker, p. 115. Dunstan is strongly associated with the suburb of Norwood; a memorial in his honour is embedded in the footpath outside the Norwood Town Hall (pictured). Dunstan was to become the most vocal opponent of the LCL Government of Sir Thomas Playford, strongly criticising its practice of electoral malapportionment, known as the Playmander, a pun on the term gerrymander. This system gave a disproportionate electoral weight to the LCL's rural base, with votes worth as much as ten times others − at the 1968 election the rural seat of Frome had 4,500 formal votes, while the metropolitan seat of Enfield had 42,000 formal votes.
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The second feature is malapportionment, which until 2008 was a significant feature of the Western Australian political landscape. Seats in metropolitan and rural areas did not contain the same number of electors—as at 30 September 2007, a Member of the Legislative Assembly represented either 28,519 metropolitan voters within the Metropolitan Region Scheme area, or 14,551 country voters. This was believed to disproportionately favour the Nationals in terms of parliamentary representation. Reforms enacted in 2005 which took effect at the 2008 election produced an average district enrolment of 21,350, which applied to all but five of the 59 districts created in the 2007 redistribution.
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Ross McMullin, The Light on the Hill: The Australian Labor Party 1891–1991 Even some reforms to the electoral system were carried through the Council, where Labor and Liberal members united to reduce the malapportionment which had given the Country Party disproportionate representation since the 1920s. In its first two years the Cain government won the approval of the Melbourne daily papers The Age, The Herald and The Argus. Nevertheless, Cain's third Government fell on 19 April 1955 when 19 expelled Labor lower house members aligned to "The Movement" "crossed the floor" against the government in a vote of no confidence, ironically the same procedure that initiated Cain's first government.
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Article 102 of the Japanese Constitution provided that half of the councillors elected in the first House of Councillors election in 1947 would be up for re-election three years later in order to introduce staggered six-year terms. The House initially had 250 seats. Two seats were added to the House in 1970 after the agreement on the repatriation of Okinawa, increasing the House to a total of 252. Legislation aimed at addressing malapportionment that favoured less- populated prefectures was introduced in 2000; this resulted in ten seats being removed (five each at the 2001 and 2004 elections), bringing the total number of seats to 242.
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Further reforms to address malapportionment took effect in 2007 and 2016, but did not change the total number of members in the house. From 1947 to 1983, the House had 100 seats allocated to a , of which fifty seats were allocated in each election. It was originally intended to give nationally prominent figures a route to the House without going through local electioneering processes. Some national political figures, such as feminists Shidzue Katō and Fusae Ichikawa and former Imperial Army general Kazushige Ugaki, were elected through the block, along with a number of celebrities such as comedian Yukio Aoshima (later Governor of Tokyo), journalist Hideo Den and actress Yūko Mochizuki.
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132–138 The Crown considered the area of West Virginia to be part of the British Virginia Colony from 1607 to 1776. The United States considered this area to be the western part of the state of Virginia (which was commonly referred as Trans-Allegheny Virginia) from 1776 to 1863, before the formation of West Virginia. Its residents were discontented for years with their position in Virginia, as the government was dominated by the planter elite of the Tidewater and Piedmont areas. The legislature had electoral malapportionment, based on the counting of slaves toward regional populations, and the western white residents were underrepresented in the state legislature.
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However, in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962) the United States Supreme Court distinguished the Colegrove decision holding that malapportionment claims under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment were not exempt from judicial review under Article IV, Section 4, as the equal protection issue in this case was separate from any political questions. The "one person, one vote" doctrine which requires electoral districts to be apportioned according to population, thus making each district roughly equal in population, was further cemented in the cases that followed Baker v. Carr, including Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368 (1963), which concerned state county districts; Reynolds v.
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This election was the start of the electoral malapportionment which became known as the Playmander. It consisted of rural districts enjoying a 2-to-1 advantage in the state parliament, even though they contained less than half of the population, as well as a change from multi-member to single-member electorates, and the number of MPs in the lower house was reduced from 46 to 39. Labor remained out of power until the 1965 election. Tom Stott was one of 14 of 39 lower house MPs to be elected as an independent, which as a grouping won 40 percent of the primary vote, more than either of the major parties.
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Historically, the Legislative Council (the upper house) had been dominated by an LCL majority for decades due to the Playmander electoral malapportionment as well as the limit on upper house voting rights to the wealthier classes with suffrage dependent on certain property and wage requirements. However they were highly independent and often obstructive to both major parties. Originally the Legislative Council had fixed staggered terms and elections were held separately from lower house elections, which would later be changed by the introduction of joint elections in the 1980s. The 1975 election saw the introduction of universal suffrage for the Legislative Council and the introduction of a statewide single electorate.
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National Archives of Australia: Background to the 1978 Cabinet records. Retrieved 19 November 2014 There have been examples of malapportionment of federal and state electoral districts in the past, often resulting in rural constituencies containing far fewer voters than urban ones and maintaining in power those parties that have rural support despite polling fewer popular votes. Past malapportionments in Queensland, Western Australia and the 'Playmander' in South Australia were notorious examples of the differences between urban and rural constituency sizes than their population would merit. The Playmander distorted electoral boundaries and policies that kept the Liberal and Country League in power for 32 years from 1936 to 1968.
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In the United States Supreme Court held in a 4-3 plurality decision that Article I, Section 4 left to the legislature of each state the authority to establish the time, place, and manner of holding elections for representatives. However, in the United States Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren overturned the previous decision in Colegrove holding that malapportionment claims under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment were not exempt from judicial review under Article IV, Section 4, as the equal protection issue in this case was separate from any political questions.Stephen Ansolabehere, James M. Snyder (2008). The End of Inequality: One Person, One Vote and the Transformation of American Politics. Norton.
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The by-election was not expected to be held in the immediate by-election slot in October 2018, but probably only in April 2019 or even later because a Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the malapportionment in the last general election to the House of Representatives is still pending.Jiji Press, September 13, 2018: 玉城衆院議員が失職＝沖縄知事選立候補でMainichi Shimbun, September 14, 2018: 衆院選 沖縄３区補選は行わず 「１票の格差」訴訟により Thy by-election date was later announced to be 21 April 2019.
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After the Second World War, the politics of the Australian state of Queensland was dominated by the Labor Party and the Country Party. In Queensland, the rural-urban divide has historically been less pronounced than in other states. While the Liberal Party and its predecessors have long been the dominant partner in the non-Labor Coalition, in Queensland the Country Party was the dominant partner from 1936 onwards when the joint Country and Progressive National Party was split into separate parties matching the federal Country and United Australia, later Liberal, parties. From 1949, an electoral malapportionment meant that regional areas held significantly more political power in the Legislative Assembly than their populations would have suggested.
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The EC has been accused of being half-hearted in electoral reforms and in 2012, the chairperson and the deputy chairperson was accused to be members of the ruling party. Both individuals admitted to may have been members at some point, but the deputy chairperson later retracted the admission and denounced it as an attempt to besmirch the EC. During the 14th Malaysia General Election on 9 May 2018, EC was accused of allowing gross gerrymandering and malapportionment practices by the incumbent government. It was also reprimanded as the ballot counting process was the longest in Malaysia's history, with the results still being streamed in after 4 a.m. the following day (10 May 2018, GMT +8:00).
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The Australian Labor Party (South Australian Branch), commonly known as South Australian Labor, is the South Australian Branch of the Australian Labor Party, originally formed in 1891 as the United Labor Party of South Australia. It is one of two major parties in the bicameral Parliament of South Australia, the other being the Liberal Party of Australia (SA Division). Since the 1970 election, marking the beginning of democratic proportional representation (one vote, one value) and ending decades of pro-rural electoral malapportionment known as the Playmander, Labor have won 11 of the 15 elections. Spanning 16 years and 4 terms, Labor was last in government from the 2002 election until the 2018 election.
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Article 16.2 of the Constitution of Ireland outlines the requirements for constituencies. The total number of TDs is to be no more than one TD representing twenty thousand and no less than one TD representing thirty thousand of the population, and the ratio should be the same in each constituency, as far as practicable, avoiding malapportionment. Constituencies are to be revised at least once in every twelve years in accordance with the census reports, which are compiled by the Central Statistics Office every five years; under the Electoral Act 1997, a Constituency Commission is to be established after each census. The Commission is independent and is responsible for the redrawing of constituency boundaries.
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The Australian House of Representatives consists of 151 single-member seats, referred to as constituencies, electorates, or electoral divisions. Seats are apportioned between the states and territories according to a formula based on population, but each state is constitutionally guaranteed a minimum of five seats. Tasmania is the only state affected by this clause; as such, while electorates in other states average around 105,000 to 125,000 voters, Tasmania's electorates average around 73,000 to 80,000 voters. Federal electoral boundaries are regulated by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), which regularly redistributes seats and boundaries to reflect changes in population. Since 1974, federal electorates within each state may not vary in population by more than 10%, largely preventing malapportionment.
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By contrast, seats in the Cantonal Council of Zürich are reapportioned in every election based on the number of votes cast in each district, which is only made possible by use of multi-member districts, and the House of Peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by contrast, is apportioned without regard to population; the three major ethnic groups - Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats - each get exactly five members. Malapportionment occurs when voters are under- or over-represented due to variation in district population. In some places, geographical area is allowed to affect apportionment, with rural areas with sparse populations allocated more seats per elector: for example in Iceland, the Falkland Islands, Scottish islands, and (partly) in US Senate elections.
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As at the 2015 redistribution, the electoral district of Albany contains the entirety of two local government areas: the City of Albany, and the Shire of Jerramungup. At the 2007 redistribution, the electoral district of Albany had the same boundaries as the City of Albany, including Albany and its suburbs, the nearby towns of Elleker, Kalgan, Lower King, Torbay. This represented a significant expansion of its boundaries, in part due to the "one-vote one-value" electoral legislation which largely abolished malapportionment between country and metropolitan electorates in the Legislative Assembly. Prior to 2007, the electorate was largely limited to Albany and its suburbs—the additional sections were within the now abolished electorate of Stirling.
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Cain was elected in 1917 to the Victorian Legislative Assembly as MLA for Jika Jika, which was renamed Northcote in 1927, a seat he held for 40 years. Victoria was Labor's weakest state, and there had never been a majority Labor state government. This was partly because of Labor's weakness in rural areas (dominated by the Country Party) and partly because of the strength of Deakinite liberalism among middle-class voters in Melbourne. Most notably the lack of a Labor majority government was however due to the high degree of rural malapportionment existing in the state's electoral system, strongly favouring the rural electorates to the disenfranchisement of inner-city electorates, where Labor's vote was centralised.
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The 1929 act has been interpreted by Irish nationalists, at the time and in later years, as an attempt by the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) to reduce nationalist representation.Pringle 1980 p.188 Dennis Pringle argues that, although gerrymandering and malapportionment at local government level was intended to strengthen Ulster unionist candidates at the expense of nationalism, this was not the case at Stormont, where the unionist majority was secure; instead, the Craigavon ministry's concern was to defend the middle-class UUP against working-class independent unionists and the Northern Ireland Labour Party. These lost more seats than the nationalists at the 1929 election, because their support was more evenly spread than the nationalist and unionist parties.
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Constituency revision is effected by an act of the Oireachtas (parliament) which enumerates the areas included within each constituency. Historically the act was drafted by the government of the day to favour its own party or parties, leading to allegations of gerrymandering by the opposition. The Electoral (Amendment) Act 1959 was struck out in 1961 by the Supreme Court as being repugnant to the Constitution of Ireland because of excessive malapportionment. The hastily enacted replacement, the Electoral (Amendment) Act 1961, relied instead on manipulating district size; the Electoral (Amendment) Act 1974 attempted to do the same, but backfired when a larger-than-anticipated swing resulted in a landslide for the opposition in the 1977 general election.
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Justice Frankfurter issued the opinion of the Court, which held that the Act did violate the provision of the 15th Amendment prohibiting states from denying anyone their right to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Justice Whittaker concurred but he said in his opinion that he believed the law should have been struck down under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This case was cited in the Court's ruling in the Tennessee malapportionment case of Baker v. Carr (1962), which required state legislatures (including both houses of bicameral legislatures) to redistrict based on population, in order to reflect demographic changes and enable representation of urban populations.
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The Public Accounts Committee investigating the 1MDB scandal was also suspended indefinitely with the promotion of four of its members to Deputy Ministers by Najib. Currently there is a court case challenging the re-delineation of electoral boundaries in Sarawak, which if carried out would affect the next state elections in Sarawak. The re- delineation of the seats in Sarawak would see an increase of 71 to 82 seats in the state assembly, but the current contention is there was no proper explanation given for the planned increase. Bersih has stated that the case, which has been successfully appealed by the Election Commission, would allow it to carry out acts of gerrymandering and malapportionment.
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The Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill 1968 proposed to specify more precisely the system of apportionment in the drawing of constituency boundaries. It would have permitted rural constituencies to elect a disproportionate number of TDs, thus allowing a degree of malapportionment. The intention was to favour rural areas which had been prone to depopulation; Fianna Fáil had a support base among the "small farmers" affected by this. The government introduced the Fourth Amendment Bill 1968 in parallel, which would have replaced the electoral system for elections to the Dáil from proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote with the first-past- the-post voting system (FPTP) based on single-seat constituencies.
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Casey was readmitted to the Labor caucus in 1977. In November 1978 he became Labor leader, replacing Tom Burns who had resigned unexpectedly.Encyclopedia of Australian Events 1978, The Macquarie Library Pty Ltd He led Labor into the 1980 election but failed to achieve more than a small swing against the Coalition Government led by Joh Bjelke-Petersen, and as a result his own authority within the state ALP was diminished. Casey made an offer to the Queensland Liberal Party after the 1980 election to form a bipartisan alliance, with the aim of opposing the electoral malapportionment from which Bjelke-Petersen benefited, and of putting in its place a system of one-vote- one-value.
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Jaensch and Bullock (1978), pp. 52–54 The LM sought to seize control of the LCL agenda by winning key positions on the state executive at the annual general meeting in September, but this was difficult as the malapportionment towards rural groups was entrenched at party level, and because the conservatives had anticipated the LM's plans. The LM President Alex Perryman challenged McLachlan for the party presidency and in a high-profile contest received 47% of the vote in a narrow defeat. He received around 90% among urban delegates and around 33% of the rural votes, the latter figure shocking the conservatives.Jaensch and Bullock (1978), pp. 54–55 The LM later generated more publicity by inquiring about alleged impropriety in the balloting process.Jaensch and Bullock (1978), pp.
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In the boundary change legislation passed to implement the Fifth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies for the 1997 general election, the London Borough of Barnet's parliamentary representation was reduced from four seats to three and the Hendon North constituency was combined with a northern part of the Hendon South constituency, creating the present Hendon constituency. A south- eastern swathe of former Hendon South was placed into Finchley and Golders Green. Within 10% of the average electorate, the seat avoided malapportionment that would otherwise exist by way of two undersized constituencies. Including the period of division of the present area (1945--97) the various general elections up to 1997 were won by Conservatives, except for the 1945 victory of Barbara Ayrton-Gould (Labour), in Hendon North (1945–50).
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In September 2014 Aoki was appointed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as a parliamentary vice-secretary for Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism alongside Kenichiro Ueno and Takashi Ōtsuka. He retained the role in Abe's next cabinet that was formed after the December 2014 House of Representatives election, but was replaced during a shuffle in October 2015. In July 2015 Aoki was one of six LDP Councillors from rural districts who were opposed to the party's policy of merging smaller districts to address the problem of vote malapportionment. Aoki and the other Councillors exited the House before a vote on a bill that merged Aoki's Shimane district with the neighbouring Tottori at-large district, the two smallest districts in the country, amongst other changes to district representation.
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Toohey J formed the sole dissent on the court. He considered that the words of the Commonwealth Constitution have varied over time, he noted that the High Court of Australia found that the connotation of the word jury had changed significantly over time in Cheatle v The Queen.. Toohey J considered that if the court considered that the meaning of 'representative' juries had changed over time this should carry over into the constitutional meaning of 'directly chosen by the people'. Whilst this reasoning was similar to Gaudron J, the difference of judgments was the result of an analysis of the causative factors in the denial of franchise; i.e. was malapportionment considered as sufficiently serious as the historical denial of suffrage to oppressed minorities.
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It was recreated in 1992 as part of the electoral reforms that ended Bjelke-Petersen-era malapportionment, and was easily won by Liberal candidate Santo Santoro, the last member for Merthyr and later a Borbidge government minister. Santoro was re-elected in 1996 and 1998, but was defeated in a shock result in 2001 by actress and Labor candidate Liddy Clark. Clark held on to the normally safe Liberal seat for two terms, but after a controversy-scarred term as a minister, was defeated by Liberal candidate Tim Nicholls in 2006. A redistribution in 2008 made Clayfield notionally Labor by 0.2%, but the Liberal National Party achieved a swing strong enough for Nicholls to retain his seat in the 2009 election.
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Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda was forced to rely on the LDP to pass the consumption tax bill and in return was pressured by Abe and the opposition parties to hold a snap general election. Noda agreed to this on the conditions that the LDP passed a bond-financing bill and would support a commission to reform the social security system and address electoral malapportionment in the next diet session. On 16 November 2012, Prime Minister Noda announced the dissolution of the lower house and that the general election would be held on 16 December. Abe campaigned using the slogan "Nippon o Torimodosu" ("Take back Japan"), promising economic revival through monetary easing, higher public spending and the continued use of nuclear energy, and a tough line in territorial disputes.
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The election saw the Liberal and Country League opposition form a minority government, winning the same number of seats in the House of Assembly as the incumbent Australian Labor Party government, despite the fact that Labor won 53.2 percent of the two-party vote, and the LCL only 46.8. This result was due to what had become known as the Playmander − an electoral malapportionment that had previously resulted in the LCL also forming government despite having a clear minority of the statewide two-party vote in 1944, 1953 and 1962. Labor lost the seats of Murray and Chaffey to the LCL. Murray was decided by a mere 21 votes, which, if they had gone in the other direction, would have secured Labor's return for a second term of government.
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From 1967 onwards Daly was a strong supporter of Gough Whitlam in his battles with the left wing of the party, and in 1969 Whitlam made him Shadow Minister for Immigration. But his support for retaining some elements of the White Australia Policy in Labor's platform caused Whitlam to remove him from the portfolio. When Labor won the 1972 election – by which time Daly was the Father of the House – he became Minister for Services and Property (in 1974 renamed Administrative Services), responsible for the Department of Services and Property. This put Daly in charge of, among other things, the Australian Electoral Commission, and he tried to pass legislation which would have abolished the malapportionment of electorates in favour of rural areas (see Australian electoral system), but his bills were defeated in the Senate.
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Labor won an additional five seats totaling 16 seats − the highest number of seats won by Labor from the 1933 election through to the 1959 election, an effort not even outdone at the 1953 election where Labor won 53 percent of the statewide two-party vote but the LCL retained government with the assistance of the Playmander − an electoral malapportionment that also saw a clear majority of the statewide two-party vote won by Labor while failing to form government in 1953, 1962 and 1968. The election was the first where the two-party vote had been retrospectively calculated. Unusually a wartime opposition won a clear majority of the two-party vote. Turnout crashed to 50 percent at the 1941 election, triggering the government to institute compulsory voting from this election.
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Since 1998 the area has formed part of the Spitalfields and Banglatown electoral ward; the last name first arising in use in the late 20th century caused controversy between the cores of both neighboring communities but the unit boundaries less so, an effect of avoiding malapportionment, that is differing size of electorates. Communities widely accept the end of the Anglican parish-based naming. In 2014, the disused Shoreditch tube station was used as a "pop-up" cinema: in summer the auditorium was furnished with six-person hot tubs from which to watch the films while in winter the concept was "bring your own pillow" to use on bean bag style beds. In September 2015, a demonstration against gentrification in London took the form of a protest at Cereal Killer Cafe, a hipster café on Brick Lane which serves cereal.
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The Coalition was defeated at the 2001 state election. Subsequently, Cowan resigned from both the party leadership and the state parliament to stand in the federal Senate election for the Nationals; however despite his profile and the party's belief that he was their best hope since Drake-Brockman's retirement, he was unsuccessful. Cowan was succeeded as leader by Max Trenorden who led the party for the next four years in coalition with the Liberals. At the 2005 state election the Nationals retained the same number of seats but the Labor Party retained power and came close to a majority in the Legislative Council and successfully implemented the ending of a malapportionment that had given the non- metropolitan parts of the state fewer voters per electorate than in the metropolitan parts; the National Party had long benefited from this arrangement.
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In most states, the legislature draws the boundaries of electoral districts, including its own; and even court decisions that set aside malapportionment acknowledge that political self-interest plays a role in decisions of the legislature.For example, in Burling v. Chandler, 148 NH 143 the New Hampshire supreme court had no problem that various redistricting proposals had partisan motives, though this observation prompted it to mandate its own redistricting map rather than endorse any of the submissions. Legislatures and the majority party can pursue self-interest by gerrymandering—contriving legislative districts to promote the election of specific individuals or to concentrate the opposition party's core constituencies in a small number of districts—or by simply declining to reapportion at all, so that the make-up of a legislature fails to track the evolving demographics of the state.
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From 1948 until the reforms following the end of the Bjelke-Petersen era, Queensland used an electoral zoning system that was tweaked by the government of the day to maximise its own voter support at the expense of the opposition. It has been called a form of gerrymander, however it is more accurately referred to as an electoral malapportionment. In a classic gerrymander, electoral boundaries are drawn to take advantage of known pockets of supporters and to isolate areas of opposition voters so as to maximise the number of seats for the government for a given number of votes and to cause opposition support to be "wasted" by concentrating their supporters in relatively fewer electorates. The Queensland "gerrymander", first introduced by the Labor Party (ALP) government of Ned Hanlon in 1949 used a series of electoral zones based on their distance from Brisbane.
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This is the phenomenon known as malapportionment, where there are significant divergences in the number of electors in electorates, leading to an unequal value of each vote. This should be distinguished from gerrymandering, which is a partisan manipulation of the borders of electorates to ensure an outcome. The 1987 Amendments to the Electoral Districts Act 1947 (WA) also changed the way the legislative council, the state's upper house, was comprised. There were 34 available seats, which were distributed amongst six regions; "North Metropolitan Region (7 members), South Metropolitan Region (5 members), East Metropolitan Region (5 members), South West Region (7 members), Agricultural Region (5 members) and the Mining and Pastoral Region (5 members)". The populations of the regions for the 1993 election were; "North Metropolitan 34,161; South Metropolitan 33,876; East Metropolitan 32,822; South West 13,721; Agricultural 13,161; Mining and Pastoral 9,097".
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The majority bonus was introduced in 2004 to replace the older method of reinforcing the proportional system. Under the previous system, seats were awarded in two or three stages, with increasing quota requirements for each stage. In its explanatory report regarding the law, the Hellenic Parliament committee responsible for that piece of legislation concluded that reinforcing the proportional system through a simple majority bonus would significantly lower the malapportionment factor of Greek elections, since it would ensure that all seats are awarded completely proportionally with the exception of the winning party, which would receive a boost equal to 13.33% of the total seats. In particular, political parties would at a minimum be awarded at least 87% of the seats they would be entitled to if the system was not reinforced, as opposed to 70% under the previous law.
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In Queensland, malapportionment combined with a gerrymander under Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen became nicknamed the Bjelkemander in the 1970s and 1980s. Under the system, electoral boundaries were drawn so that rural electorates had as few as half as many voters as metropolitan ones and regions with high levels of support for the opposition Labor Party were concentrated into fewer electorates, allowing Bjelke- Petersen's Country Party (later National Party) led Coalition government to remain in power despite attracting substantially less than 50% of the vote. In the 1986 election, for example, the National Party received 39.64% of the first preference vote and won 49 seats (in the 89 seat Parliament) whilst the Labor Opposition received 41.35% but won only 30 seats. Despite this, the Liberals/Nationals still received a greater combined share of the vote than the Labor opposition because the system also worked against the Liberal representation.
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From the first House of Councillors election in 1947 until the 1992 election, Hyogo elected six Councillors in two sets of three at elections held every three years. Under 1994 electoral reform Hyogo's representation was reduced to four (two sets of two), which took effect from the 1995 election. Twenty years later, the district had the same level of representation as not only the Hokkaido and Fukuoka districts, which also had more than 4 million voters each, but also the Niigata, Miyagi and Nagano districts, which each had less than 2 million voters. To address this malapportionment in representation, a 2015 revision of the Public Officers Election Law increased the representation of the Hyogo, Hokkaido and Fukuoka districts to six Councillors; this change began to take effect at the July 2016 election, at which three Councillors were elected by the district for the first time since 1992.
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Labor and Liberal Parties, SA, Dean Jaensch, "A 2:1 ratio of enrolments in favour of the rural areas was in force from 1936." It consisted of 26 low-population rural seats holding up to a 10-to-1 advantage over the 13 high-population metropolitan seats in the state parliament, even though rural seats contained only a third of South Australia's population. At the peak of the malapportionment in 1968, the rural seat of Frome had 4,500 formal votes, while the metropolitan seat of Enfield had 42,000 formal votes. Labor managed to win enough parliamentary seats to form government just once during the Playmander against the odds − in 1965. Labor won comprehensive majorities of the statewide two-party vote whilst failing to form government in 1944, 1953, 1962 and 1968. More equitable boundaries were subsequently put in place following the 1968, 1975, and 1989 elections.
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He was known for his parochial style in pushing South Australia's interests, and was known for his ability to secure a disproportionate share of federal funding for the state as well as his shameless haranguing of federal leaders. His string of election wins was enabled by a system of a malapportionment gerrymander that bore his name, the 'Playmander' − which saw the Labor Party win clear majorities of the statewide two-party vote whilst failing to form government in 1944, 1953, 1962 and 1968. Born into an old political family, Playford was the fifth Thomas Playford and the fourth to have lived in South Australia; his grandfather Thomas Playford II had served as premier in the 19th century. He grew up on the family farm in Norton Summit before enlisting in the Australian Imperial Force in World War I, fighting in Gallipoli and Western Europe.
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Dunstan's socially progressive administration saw Aboriginal land rights recognised, homosexuality decriminalised, the first female judge appointed, the first non- British governor, Sir Mark Oliphant, and later, the first indigenous governor Sir Douglas Nicholls. He enacted consumer protection laws, reformed and expanded the public education and health systems, abolished the death penalty, relaxed censorship and drinking laws, created a ministry for the environment, enacted anti-discrimination law, and implemented electoral reforms such as the overhaul of the Legislative Council of parliament, lowered the voting age to 18, enacted universal suffrage, and completely abolished malapportionment. He also established Rundle Mall, enacted measures to protect buildings of historical heritage, and encouraging arts, with support for the Adelaide Festival Centre, the State Theatre Company, and the establishment of the South Australian Film Corporation. However, there were also problems; the economy began to stagnate, and the large increases to burgeoning public service generated claims of waste.
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The reviews of the Boundary Commission for England since 1954 have consulted locally on splitting the island into two seats (and included occasional proposals for a seat crossing the Solent onto the mainland) but met an overall distaste by the independent commissioners and most consultees and consultation respondents. The consensus of varying panels of Boundary Commissioners, party- interested and neutral commentators is that the island would be best represented by one MP. The Commissioners did make mention perfunctorily of their duty by law to avoid such an extent of malapportionment (termed by most commissioners "leaving the island somewhat oversized"). One problem the independent body cited in 2008 was a difficulty of dividing the island in two in a way that would be acceptable to all major interests. The arbitrary division line problem is routinely encountered in those council areas which have no rural elements or natural divides.
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A string of policy papers were released on a range of themes emphasising responsible economic management and efficient, honest administration. While they maintained a positive and professional public opinion and consistently led opinion polls, neither the media nor the electorate appeared to believe they could win. The Liberals, who had been on the crossbenches since the collapse of the Coalition in 1983, launched a series of newspaper advertisements in March 1988 under the banner "Let's Put It Right". They were in a curious position, however, because a collapse in National support in urban South East Queensland would mean that seats the Liberal Party might hope to win would be more likely to go to Labor. On 1 April 1989, a non-partisan group called "Citizens for Democracy" gained some publicity by cutting a birthday cake to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Electoral Districts Act 1949, which had established electoral malapportionment in Queensland, which was seen as unfairly benefiting the Nationals.
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Romsey and Waterside in Hampshire 1983–1997 1983–1997: The Borough of Test Valley wards of Abbey, Blackwater, Chilworth and Nursling, Cuppernham, Field, North Baddesley, Romsey Extra, and Tadburn, and the District of New Forest wards of Blackfield and Langley, Colbury, Dibden and Hythe North, Dibden Purlieu, Fawley Holbury, Hythe South, Marchwood, Netley Marsh, Totton Central, Totton North, and Totton South. 1997–2010: The Borough of Test Valley wards of Abbey, Blackwater, Chilworth and Nursling, Cuppernham, Dun Valley, Field, Harewood, Kings Somborne and Michelmersh, Nether Wallop and Broughton, North Baddesley, Over Wallop, Romsey Extra, Stockbridge, and Tadburn, the Borough of Eastleigh wards of Chandler’s Ford, Hiltingbury East, and Hiltingbury West, and the City of Southampton ward of Bassett. The constituency was approximate to the Test Valley district of Hampshire and covered a smaller area as parts of the north of Test Valley fell into part of the North West Hampshire seat to roughly ensure equal size electorates (low malapportionment). The main town within the constituency was Romsey.
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Nevertheless, the Cain government was able to pass more legislation than any previous Labor government in Victoria had done. Major reforms were carried out in the areas of workers' compensation, tenancy law, long service leave, hospitals, public transport, housing, charities and the Crimes Act. Changes included the provision on long-service leave to railway workers, increased eligibility to workers' compensation, alterations to the Shops and Factories Act and the Landlord and Tenant Act, and the introduction of legislation "to penalize rogues who resorted to fraudulent misrepresentation in soliciting corporate investment from the public." The government had also reformed wage determination procedures and public service administration, while constructive initiatives were carried out in adult education and soil conservation.Ross McMullin, The Light on the Hill: The Australian Labor Party 1891–1991 Even some reforms to the electoral system were carried through the Council, where Labor and Liberal members united to reduce the malapportionment which had given the Country Party disproportionate representation since the 1920s.
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Similarly to differences in voter turnout, instances of malapportionment across districts can also cause disproportionate results for the legislature as a whole, but they are far less disproportionate than non-PR systems. In the PR-STV elections to the Australian Senate, States with vastly different populations have the same number of seats, and so while the results for individual states are proportional, the nationwide result is not, giving greater voting power to individual voters in less populated states, but that applied to the previous two voting systems used, and would apply to any alternative to PR-STV as it is an entrenched aspect of how the Senate is constituted. Each original State is entitled to the same number of senators in order to protect the interests of the less populous States. Thus the number of senators does not take into account the population of the State or Territory, and thus by nature it is not intended to be proportional across the nation.
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Because the Fifteenth Amendment would have been superfluous if the Fourteenth Amendment (the basis of the reapportionment decisions) had conferred a general right to vote, he claimed that the Constitution did not require states to adhere to the one man, one vote principle, and that the Court was merely imposing its own political theories on the nation. He suggested, in addition, that the problem of malapportionment was one that should be solved by the political process, and not by litigation. He wrote: > This Court, limited in function in accordance with that premise, does not > serve its high purpose when it exceeds its authority, even to satisfy > justified impatience with the slow workings of the political process. For > when, in the name of constitutional interpretation, the Court adds something > to the Constitution that was deliberately excluded from it, the Court, in > reality, substitutes its view of what should be so for the amending process.
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The court has thus far declined to consider any other state constitutional amendments, or state parliaments, that have entrenched malapportioned electoral districts in their electoral map. The role of malapportionment in Australian politics remains strong, and the impact on states such as Western Australia remains difficult to fully value. The lack of population densi McHugh J's judgment also extended a line of jurisprudence that had flowed from a series of cases in the 1980s and 1990s dealing with implied freedoms of political communication, that ‘the political and legal sovereignty of Australia now resides in the people of Australia’. (2017) 45(3) Federal Law Review 415 A distinction between the 'political' conception of sovereignty, and the legal definition, was a concept first elucidated by James Bryce in the early 20th century. The concept of the political, or popular, version of sovereignty could be defined as ‘the notion that the ultimate source of all authority exercised through the public institutions of the state originates in the people.
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In March 2011, the Supreme Court decided that the malapportionment of electoral districts in the 2009 election had been in an unconstitutional state. As in previous such rulings (elections of 1972, 1980, 1983 and 1990), the election result is not invalidated, but the vote weight disparity must be reduced by the National Diet soon. The 2009 election has been the first House of Representatives election ruled unconstitutional since the electoral reform of the 1990s and the introduction of parallel voting in single-member districts and proportional "blocks".47 News/Kyodo News, March 28, 2011: ２・３０倍の格差は「違憲状態」 ０９年衆院選で最高裁 The two major parties want to use the reform to also significantly reduce the number of proportional seats as both had promised in their 2009 campaigns, but meet resistance from the smaller parties that depend on proportional seats.
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Following the close result of the election where Labor formed minority government, initial one vote one value electoral reform was enacted by Dunstan which would later be amended by future Labor premier John Bannon, after winning the 1989 election on 48.1 percent of the two-party vote. However, these winning minorities were closer than those of the Playmander period and did not occur as a result of malapportionment or weighting. Indeed, some metropolitan seats saw more than three times the number of voters than in some rural seats, something that would be rectified by the one vote one value electoral reform. It became the first and only state from 1989 to legislate the Electoral Commission of South Australia should redraw boundaries after each election with the objective that the party which receives over 50 percent of the statewide two-party vote at the forthcoming election should win the two-party vote in a majority of seats.
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The difficulties of keeping in touch with the population over such enormous and diverse regions were cited by both Labor (in 1949) and the Country Party in 1971 as reasons for malapportionment. At the 1956 election the change from the previous one vote-one value system was dramatic. The Brisbane-area seat of Mount Gravatt had 26307 voters, while the seat of Charters Towers in far northern Queensland had just 4367, a ratio of six to one. If the number of votes cast per party is divided by the number of seats won, the effect on party representation is underscored. In 1956 the Labor Party needed 7000 votes to win each seat, the Country Party 9900, and the Liberals 23800. Using the Dauer-Kelsay Index, which calculates the smallest percentage of voters needed to win an election, the theoretical ideal being just over 50%, at the 1957 election this number was 39.1%, meaning that the non-Labor parties would have required more than 60% of the vote to win.
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The Goss Government introduced several electoral and public sector reforms, the most notable being the elimination of the "Bjelkemander" malapportionment that had helped keep the Queensland Nationals in power. In addition to reforming the state’s electoral laws and boundaries, the Goss Government "introduced merit-based appointments to the Queensland public service, created new National Parks and oversaw a new regime of economic and budgetary management" It also introduced social reforms such as decriminalising homosexuality, appointing Queensland's first female Governor, abolishing the Queensland Police Special Branch and Imperial honours, and made provision "to buy thousands of extra university places and hire thousands of new teachers". Goss' Chief of Staff as Premier was former diplomat Kevin Rudd, later leader of the federal Labor Party and Prime Minister of Australia, and Goss' 1989 campaign director was Wayne Swan, subsequently Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. Goss won a second term at the 1992 state election, maintaining the same 19-seat majority he won in 1989 over the National Party and the Liberal Party (the two non-Labor parties went out of coalition in 1983, but resumed the coalition after the 1992 election).
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During the post-war era, large numbers of people were relocating to the urban centers in the seeking of wealth; though some re-apportionments have been made to the number of each prefecture's assigned seats in the Diet, rural areas generally have more representation than do urban areas.U.S. Library of Congress Country Studies Japan – Electoral System. Retrieved June 8, 2007. The Supreme Court of Japan began exercising judicial review of apportionment laws following the Kurokawa decision of 1976, invalidating an election in which one district in Hyōgo Prefecture received five times the representation of another district in Osaka Prefecture. In recent elections the malapportionment ratio amounted to 4.8 in the House of Councillors (census 2005: Ōsaka/Tottori;National Diet Library Issue Brief, March 11, 2008: 参議院の一票の格差・定数是正問題 Retrieved December 17, 2009. election 2007: Kanagawa/Tottorinikkei.net, September 29, 2009: １票の格差、大法廷30日判決 07年参院選4.86倍 Retrieved December 17, 2009.) and 2.3 in the House of Representatives (election 2009: Chiba 4/Kōchi 3).Asahi Shimbun, August 18, 2009: 有権者９８万人増 「一票の格差」２．３倍に拡大 Retrieved December 17, 2002.
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